A scandal in GERB's Bulgaria usually lasts for a couple of days as it is superseded by the next scandal to keep the public busy and thinking about things other than the politics and the problems of the day. One…

The ongoing "patriotic" craze that has gripped Bulgaria since Boyko Borisov's GERB allied itself with the extreme nationalists of the National Salvation Front, the VMRO and Ataka, all of them currently in government, sometimes assumes odd, even surreal proportions. Forget…

The Bulgarian government is serious in its fight against corruption. The latest example of a legal action against someone suspected of corruption happened in Septemvri, a town in central Bulgaria. The Office of the Special Prosecutor, which is the state…

As Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, who had said the previous month that he had not been on holiday for "17 years," was doing some summertime rounds of asphalted roads and archaeological sites, his man in Tsarevo, the local GERB mayor,…

Boyko Borisov was found guilty of malicious slander by a Sofia Regional Court judge in a case brought on by Elena Yoncheva, a TV journalist and now an MP for the opposition BSP, or Bulgarian Socialist Party. Yoncheva, who is…

Bulgaria's rotating presidency of the EU, in whose name many Bulgarians have to put up with the "stability" of the Boyko Borisov rule, suffered an ignominious setback at an youth conference, in April. The allegations were voiced by Luis Alvarado,…

This section of Vagabond is usually reserved for the funnier and/or exceptionally eccentric statements and deeds of Bulgaria's statesmen, but in this issue we bring on the results, without a comment, of a poll conducted by Trend, an independent polling…

Under GERB, life in Bulgaria becomes increasingly absurd as exemplified by the "purchase" of CEZ, the power distribution company that controls the electricity grid of the whole of western Bulgaria, including the capital, Sofia, by a heretofore totally unknown woman,…

Ten years into its EU membership and after millions of leva spent on infrastructure projects, some of which needed to be made over, owing to poor workmanship, a few days after they had been inaugurated, Bulgaria succeeded in setting up…

VAGABOND VIDEO

On 4 February 1997 President Petar Stoyanov, who had just taken Bulgaria by storm, finally brought political enemies together to agree on a settlement that would pull the country back from the brink of civil unrest.

Looking back at pictures from the time, he tells us how he took Bulgaria closer to the Western world and firmly on course for membership of the EU. Produced by www.mycentury.tv